Tell Your Club To Ready For Blood: Revenue Sharing and The Race To LA

No, no, no! No more! Not this time, consiglieri. No more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. You give 'em one message: I want Sollozzo. If not, it's all-out war: we go to the mattresses.

Sonny Corleone from The Godfather

Its war in the NFL.

No not the looming playoff battles between Vikings and Cowboys or Saints and Eagles its a much worse type of war, a civil war is coming to the league.

And its not players vs owners.

No the players and owners are a smaller war its the war between the small market teams and the large market monster franchises that matters.

Revenue sharing is dying and a salary cap, and a salary floor, are gone next season.

Its not Colts vs Chargers its going to be Cowboys and Redskins united against Jaguars, Vikings, and Bills.

Its the big market East coast behemoths, the Gotham teams, Washington, Philadelphia,  Boston, Atlanta, and Miami uniting with their big money Texas dual of Cowboys and Texans to squeeze the juice from the small market ball clubs.

Chicago, the city of Capone, is going to muscle into Indianapolis.

Its the golden rule, that is the ones with the gold make the rules. 

Tony Soprano would appreciate the dynamic shift. The teams with the most muscle eat most of the pie.

Enjoy the crumbs little fellas.

Al Swearengen, the saloon owner in the late, great series Deadwood provided the tell your God to ready for blood line, once also said If I bleat when I speak, it's because I've just been fleeced.

Anyone ever hear a Bill or Bengal bleat? Listen close because you soon will.

Events that Pete Rozelle and the old guard NFL Owners long feared could unravel the league are unfolding. 

Perhaps when Wellington Mara, one of the last and most powerful old guard owners, passed the levee, at long last, broke.

A Pandora's Box of team migration and chaos will unfold as small market teams scramble for sweeter pastures.

As teams squeezed by the sourest economy since George Halas's Bears were bullying teams during the Great Depression are further pummelled by the top teams taking more of the pie small market clubs will look to greener pastures.

Except in this economic turd-storm oasis', except for cheap bars with that moniker, are hard to find.

Los Angeles is one ripe, sweet home many teams are eyeing.

The market and the money is in LA, along with a sweet new stadium deal brokered on the backs of a bad, broken California economy, and teams will rush toward it.

Who will it be?

Will the Vikings follow the Lakers to LA? Will the Raiders, Rams, or Chargers move back to LA?

Does Los Angeles Jaguars have a nice ring?

What about LA Bills? The man the team is named for, Buffalo Bill Cody, would love Hollywood, he might of been our first world wide media star, so perhaps it's destiny for the Bills to hop a train west.

Cody never spent much time in New York state anyway.

Or maybe LA will grab an expansion team. If they do I'm hoping its called the LA Confidentials.

Maybe some teams will even venture into international pastures.

The Toronto Bills are always a good possibility but what about the Mexico City Jaguars or the London Vikings?

The big market  NFC and AFC East teams, save the small market Bills, will gain money, power and players.

Though one could gift the 1984 San Francisco Forty Niner offense and the 1985 Chicago Bear defense to Danny Snyder and he still, somehow, muck it up. 

Some notoriously cheap teams, like the Bengals, Bears, Bills and Cardinals might use the the removal of the salary cap floor to go to ground. These teams might tank it and bank for a few years and grow the dividends.

The NFL will soon have old faces and new places. The NFL will soon have a lot of Pittsburgh Pirate like teams and a few New York Yankee powerhouses. 

The dominoes will soon start falling and when the dust settles and the super-teams emerge will it be a better game?

Only time will tell but going to the mattresses didn't work out all that well for Sonny Corleone. 

And recall what one wise old head coach once said: "A house divided against itself can not stand."